The F-word discussion

Our October Nonfiction selection will be Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, published in 2011.

Any initial thoughts on this one? Seems people were really interested in reading it, so I hope you'll join us!

I am going to join on this one - if I remember correctly I nominated it, so there you go :) Will be back with thoughts when I make some progress.

Great! I look forward to your thoughts. I am just waiting on my library to magic up a copy.

I started this over the weekend, but haven't been able to spend much time with it lately. I'm finding it interesting, but very early on it seems the author references studies or research though does not really elaborate on them. They almost seem thrown in just to benefit her based on what she is saying. In other words, it's not a very academic read, but I want to try to put that aside and just focus on her thoughts.

I do not have children, nor am I going to have any, so this interests me from an easy, non-parental perspective. I've long been bugged by the prevalence of the color pink when it comes to "girl toys", but so far, anyway, it seems Orenstein has pushed her daughter away from that in an equally bad way. If you tell your child no, doesn't that make them want it all the more?

Sorry, not very articulate these days. What I mean is, if you force your girls to play with pink or feminine toys, and your boys to play with blue or masculine toys, regardless of what they want to play with, isn't that equally as damaging or troublesome?

I have a friend who has a daughter. My friend does not like the color pink, but it's her daughter's favorite color. Her daughter is also strong into science and mathematics and otherwise being a complete bad-ass, and my friend wants to foster that, even if her daughter wants to be a princess one day and a scientist the next. I find that admirable because she's letting her daughter make the choice, not dictating the choices for her.

Again, maybe that's Orenstein's point but very early on it seems she rails against everything pink/"girlie" for her daughter which makes me worry the direction this book will go.

I also see this book was discussed in 2013, and I'm not sure why that didn't come up in my search during the nomination period. Sorry if this is all a duplication for any longtime members of the group. I hope those who have read it already will still join in and share your thoughts, and that those of us who weren't around here in 2013 or couldn't read it then can at least read and discuss it together now.

I am also in the beginning of this, so these are my initial thoughts. I have no children right now and have not made up my mind on whether to have any, but as a good social scientist I am doing my research before any decisions - hence, my interest in this book :)
I have a niece whose parents throw all the pink and "girlie" toys at her because that is "what you do." I find this disturbing because it is limiting and does not allow this child to make up her own mind. They also live in a country that has very rigid gender roles, so societal pressure is very high. Therefore, I find Orenstein's book very alarming, if American society, which is supposedly more progressive, has already commercialized this gendered culture here.
I agree with you, El, that if you push your children in one direction, even if it is a more positive one, you are still limiting their choices. I wonder if Orenstein addresses this later on. I also wonder how much control can you actually exert over your own children if they are bombarded with princesses from all sides.

This is highly readable (reads quickly/accessible), but I feel like it's stuff I already know, and have known since before 2011 when this was published. Is anyone else having that experience or am I being too hard on it?

I'm on Chapter Five ("Sparkle, Sweetie!") which discusses pageants like those on Toddlers & Tiaras and the age-old questions: Is this dangerous to our girls? When is it what the girls want and when is it the girls want to do it because that's what their parents want?

So far, I haven't come across a lot of answers in this book - and maybe, again, it's much too early (not even 100 pages in), but this doesn't strike me as the sort of book to offer solutions more than to just shout about the injustices of marketing and the pageantry industries.

I'm still reading and would love to finish reading this before I go back to work on Monday, but I'm finding this frustrating. Not so much for her writing, but the topic itself is one that I feel is not new so I'm waiting for some sort of revelation that I am not convinced is going to appear.

I think this is supposed to be for broader consumption and therefore, not a ground-breaking work. It is likely that members of this groups will not find the material new. It might be one of these books you give to people not very familiar with feminist issues. I am still not far along, though, so we'll see.

I have just a one word commentary on this subject:

Disney.

Kay wrote: "I think this is supposed to be for broader consumption and therefore, not a ground-breaking work. It is likely that members of this groups will not find the material new. It might be one of these b..."

Oh, I know. I have a hard time with a lot of books that are filled with good material like this because it always seems like it's "preaching to the choir", and I get frustrated because the people who need the information (the misogynists, the sexists, the racists, the any-ists depending on the topic) are the ones who will not read the material.

This would be a great book to use in women's studies classes in college, I think - it's familiar information to a lot of those students too, but those who are taking the class just for the credits and may not know much about women's issues or history would benefit. At least, I hope they would.

CD wrote: "I have just a one word commentary on this subject:

Disney."

Hah! You mean because of the amount of time that is spent talking about Disney?

I will say one of the most eye-opening parts for me in this read was the bit about the marketing of the Disney Princesses, and how they were designed specifically to never look at one another on any product if they were all posing together. I had no idea that was an actual thing. But now that I know it, I can't un-see it!

I found that fascinating. Incredibly sad, but fascinating. It's amazing how much we are manipulated without even knowing it by marketing and branding.

I had no idea about the princesses not looking at each other either - my mind is boggled that it is even a thing!

Wow... O.o

I just got to the Twilight discussion (109) and it's cracking me up :)

Laurie, I agree with most of what you said. Your point about fairy tales and modern children's lit is interesting - I am not that familiar with it so it didn't cross my mind that Orenstein is not covering the whole spectrum there.

I interpreted the issue with Wonder Woman as a sex-positive model for children - she is scantily dressed because of choice (easier to fight :) than girls in a Miley Cyrus concert, whose bodies are for consumption. I might be putting my own ideas about WW here, though.

Sure, but that doesn't change what the representation of Wonder Woman is compared with Miley Cyrus.

Hi Laurie, thanks for your thoughts. I think we had discussed the armor of the new Wonder Woman in a different thread (perhaps the Feminist Movies thread? meh, can't remember now).

The discussions I had read about the armor was that it was realistic in that a warrior wouldn't want anything that is extremely heavy or unwieldy in battle. But I also agree with your perspective that it still seems exceptionally limited even in those terms.

The difference for me between Wonder Woman and, to continue the example, Miley Cyrus, as Kay pointed out, is that I believe the intended outcome is different. Maybe I'm being naive in that belief, but ultimately I felt WW's outfit in the movie was meant to be functional, though yes, it is also sexually pleasing to men. Whereas I feel with Miley Cyrus, she was/is/whatever setting out to be sexually pleasing to men, and is not as concerned about functionality as appealing.

A friend of mine has a six-year-old who did get to go see Wonder Woman. She walked out of the theater feeling empowered, not by what WW was wearing, but by her attitude and strength and what she accomplished in the movie. Miley, I think, is not as popular now as she was when this book was first written, but I'm sure we could fill the blank with really any other pop culture icon - no one, I think, is looking up to Miley or the Kardashians as being strong, empowering women. They are into them for the music, or their shows, or their Instagram feeds.

There's a difference between just being eye candy (for male consumption, as Kay pointed out) and being the woman that men want to be with, yes, but that other women also want to be - not because they are desired by men, but because they love seeing a kick-ass woman.

I certainly see both sides to this argument, and also continue to wait for a less-sexualized version of Wonder Woman.

People have probably already seen this article about the fashion choices in the movie, but I'll leave it here just in case anyone else is interested.

All that being said, I think we're closer now to what Wonder Woman should be (as an empowering feminist character) than she has ever been in history through the comics (though admittedly I haven't read the more recent issues/versions) or the original television show.

I would love it if Orenstein would do an updated version of her book, including her thoughts on the new movie. I feel bad that a lot of us are responding here to her thoughts on WW with the recent movie in mind, but I still believe it's a better representation than what she had to work with in 2011 when the book was first published.